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That number would still be far short of what the White House had hoped for before the severity of the website’s defects became apparent. But it would still be about four times the puny sign-up of under 27,000 in October. Several states running their own exchanges have also been reporting steady climbs in enrollment — although a few like Oregon are still facing technical problems hampering sign-up.

“We’re in the process of scrubbing final data and expect to report November numbers in mid-December, but we expect that enrollment will increase with the technical improvements we’ve made, enrollment taking place across our customer service channels and the surge in enrollment that many states who are running their own marketplaces have reported,” Peters said. “ At the same time, it’s important to remember we are just two months into a six-month open enrollment period that we expect will ramp up over time as we’ve seen in other implementation efforts, such as Massachusetts and Medicare Part D.”

The administration had hoped for about 800,000 people in the state and federal exchanges by now, and about 7 million by the end of March. Officials announced over the weekend they had met their targets for making key fixes to the website, which is now working faster and with fewer crashes and errors. But they acknowledged the website is far from perfect despite the repair effort, and will need more work.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 7:41 a.m. Dec. 2, 2013.